El Ciudadano
Original article: Los huérfanos de Steinert
By The El Ciudadano Investigation Team
On Tuesday, May 19, 2026, Trinidad Steinert ceased to be the Minister of Public Security. Her departure had been anticipated since the previous week, when she struggled for over an hour to read from a document she clearly hadn’t mastered before the Chamber of Deputies, failing to present the PowerPoint prepared for the session.
This moment, with the minister of the government’s most emblematic portfolio reading hesitantly before the assembly, became a hallmark of a management failure that extended far beyond communication issues.
The special session on May 12 had been called by 52 opposition deputies to demand accountability from the minister regarding the government’s security plan, which was criticized as nonexistent. Steinert arrived with a PowerPoint presentation, but the opposition repeatedly denied her the unanimous consent needed to project it on five occasions. What followed was an uninterrupted reading of loose papers for an hour and 18 minutes.
Parliamentarians from various factions described her presentation as “one of the most embarrassing displays we’ve seen in Congress in a long time.” Some compared it to “a reading at the level of a fifth-grade student.” The ruling party attempted its usual defense mechanisms, but even within its ranks, signs of discomfort emerged.
This wasn’t merely about the PowerPoint. The essential problem was that without it, the minister had nothing. A knowledgeable minister can defend their plan without visual aids, respond to questions, and articulate strategy. The session revealed that those who designed the plan lacked a deep understanding of it themselves. Steinert’s self-critique – stating that “in politics, one must listen and explain as many times as necessary” – was too late and failed to address the fundamental question: Was there a real security plan, or just pages to read?
This session also highlighted the legislative drought in the ministry. Members from different sectors criticized the Ministry of Security for failing to advance its own legal initiatives or consolidate a coherent legislative agenda to tackle organized crime.
In an institutional framework where effectiveness relies on the continuous updating of legal norms, this absence is not merely a communication issue; it represents a strategic void. This directly stems from the makeup of the teams that led the ministry during its first months, none of whom possessed accredited experience in legislative management, regulatory formulation, or parliamentary articulation.
What the media did not capture as clearly was what transpired in the hours leading up to Steinert’s departure. On the afternoon of Monday, May 18, a day before Kast signed the cabinet reshuffle, the minister appointed a new chief of staff: lawyer Jorge Chocair, who had been serving as head of advisors at the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention. A position that lasted exactly one day.
This minor detail encapsulates a larger issue: the implosion of a leadership that operated until the end based on emergency criteria and personal trust, with no supporting institutional framework, leaving behind a series of political and technical orphans now facing very different scenarios within Teatinos 220.
The Chief of Staff of One Day and the Undersecretary Without a Minister
The departure of Francisco Chambi, the civil builder whom Steinert brought from Tarapacá as her right-hand man, whose controversy over traveling abroad on medical leave became an unsustainable political burden, left a gap that was filled by lawyer Jorge Chocair. He assumed on Monday, May 18. By Tuesday, May 19, Steinert was removed. The total duration of Chocair’s tenure as chief of staff: less than 24 hours.
Chocair has a more solid profile than his predecessor. A lawyer with experience at the National Intelligence Agency and the National Prosecutor’s Office, where he worked for several years and served as Coordinator of the Specialized Group Against Organized Crime of Mercosur. He also has ties to Renovación Nacional through his sister, former provincial governor of Cordillera, Mireya Chocair.
However, his trajectory also includes connections to the Radical Party and a prominent academic career, placing him in a ministerial environment heavily ideologized towards Kast’s libertarian republicanism. In a government where political trust is currency, a man with such a history in a republican ministry occupies, by definition, a precarious position.
This incident stands out as one of the most telling episodes of the Steinert era: an institution that was supposed to operate with continuity and technical authority ended up appointing a chief of staff who served less time than a news cycle.
The person left in the most delicate situation after Steinert’s exit is the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention, Ana Victoria Quintana Olguín. A criminal lawyer and member of the Libertarian National Party, her membership was suspended to assume her position. Quintana had shared a career with Steinert at the Public Ministry, where a strong friendship blossomed. That closeness became her greatest asset within the ministry. With Steinert gone, it turned into her heaviest liability.
On the night of May 12, during the disastrous session in the Chamber, Quintana stood beside Steinert. She guided the minister’s speech, pointed to the pages, and supported her presence in the chamber. That image synthesized the real dynamics of the ministry’s leadership: the minister as a visible figure, the undersecretary as the real operational support.
With Steinert out, that role became a burden. Within the ruling party, they recognize that Quintana is left in the “most uncomfortable scenario”, precisely due to her closeness with the former minister and her own communication missteps: claiming that homicide reports were published so that people “could take precautions” – a phrase that the opposition interpreted as a call for self-protection – and dismissing parliamentary criticisms of the security plan by stating that deputies expected “a bound book.”
What complicates her position further is that, as a libertarian, she lacks the organic support of the Republican Party or traditional center-right. The PNL publicly defends her, but that support has little weight within the cabinet.
The personal closeness between Quintana and Steinert exacerbated this situation beyond reason. Internal sources from the ministry describe an undersecretary who operated in complete loyalty to the minister, granting her every request (resources, personnel, even the physical reorganization of the building when Steinert requested to change floors upon assuming office), without that generosity translating into technical reciprocity toward the system.
The result was an undersecretariat weakened in its own capacities and subordinated to the ministerial cabinet’s agenda. Now, with Steinert out, Quintana must account for decisions she made in that context. And she must do so alone, without the political cover that protected her for two months.
The Destruction of the System that the Law Mandated to Build
There is a problem that predates any evaluation of individuals and defines the real scenario facing the new minister, Martín Arrau: Law 21.730 is not a declarative text. It is a law with concrete mandates, deadlines, and specific institutional responsibilities.
Among these are the implementation of the National Security and Prevention System, the launch of the Integrated Criminal Information System (which was supposed to interconnect real-time data from Carabineros, PDI, Gendarmería, Prosecutor’s Office, SII, Customs, the Civil Registry, and the National Migration Service), and the operation of the Technical Secretariat that coordinates the system’s agencies.
During the management of Steinert and Quintana, none of those mandates registered verifiable progress. The Integrated System was put on hold following the abrupt dismissal of the engineer leading its development: the project was not reassigned, documented formally, or handed over to any unit with equivalent capabilities. According to ministry officials, no progress has been recorded to date.
To understand how this situation arose, it is essential to examine the administrative decisions that made it possible. The Ministerial Strategic Unit, the only body capable of long-term planning and integrated data management, was dissolved from the first month of management.
The Strategic Management Department of the SPD, which acted as technical support for the Technical Secretariat of the National System, was eliminated from the organizational chart with no equivalent replacement. In its stead, personal confidants of the ministerial cabinet were appointed to take on the roles of strategic planning, system interoperability, and development of the so-called Security Master Plan promised during the campaign.
This personnel included Daniela Oyarzún Eihhorst, who had previously served as an assistant at Adolfo Ibáñez University, without prior professional practice; and Sergio Pavez García, whose background included overseeing tourism projects and commercial collections, yet lacking prior knowledge in public management or statistics.
The outcome of these appointments surprised no one familiar with the sector. The security plan that the government prepared as a programmatic document (the same one Steinert could not defend without PowerPoint in front of the Chamber) had to undergo a thorough technical review by professional teams within the ministry before it could be published. The corrections required were so extensive that the initial document was not the finished product that should have been presented, but merely a draft with substantive deficits that necessitated intensive rectification work.
This process isn’t unusual when the team designing the plan lacks experience in the subject matter. What is unusual is for this to happen in the ministry with the government’s most sensitive mandate, whose political chief ascended to the presidency promising that security was the emergency justifying his existence.
But the problem does not end with those who formulated the plan. It extends to those tasked with sustaining the data infrastructure that feeds it and to those who must manage the resources with which the system operates.
Paulo Adrián Garbisu holds the acting position of Head of the SPD Studies Division, the unit that produces statistical data for the Ministry (victimization surveys, analysis of crime trends, program evaluations, management indicators) on which the Integrated Criminal Information System should rely.
The key term is “acting”: Adrián occupies the position temporarily because, according to internal sources, he does not meet the minimum requirements established in the law to be designated as the permanent Division Chief. His academic profile (a sociologist from PUC with a master’s in Philosophy) has merit of its own, but it does not replace the experience accumulated in crime statistics management, interinstitutional information systems coordination, or leadership of specialized technical teams.
The Studies Division has historically been led by professionals with years of experience in the criminal justice system or in research bodies with substantive roles in security data production. Adrián breaks that pattern not due to exceptional merit, but due to political affinity. And he does so at a time when that Division must provide the statistical basis upon which any attempts to rebuild the Integrated System will rest.
Next on the list is Ricardo Gajardo Espinoza, close to Steiner, and currently head of the Administration and Finance Division, who comes from a position of internal administration at the Tarapacá Prosecutor’s Office.
His experience in administration and logistics is real; the issue is that the DAF of the undersecretariat with the largest budget and staff in the ministry is not a conventional administration unit. It is the body that must validate tenders for technological projects, IT service contracts, and resource execution within an institution where the most significant investments are precisely in technology and data, that is, in the components sustaining the Integrated Criminal Information System.
Without experience in public technology or in managing high-complexity projects, Gajardo faces a structural contradiction: he must approve technical decisions that he cannot evaluate with his own criteria.
The foreseeable result is dependence on suppliers, an inability to oversee the quality of contracted work, and a gap in control that can have long-term consequences in technology projects of this sensitivity.
In practice, the system that was supposed to orchestrate the criminal intelligence of the Chilean state is being administered – in its budgetary and contractual dimensions – by someone whose professional life has unfolded in the internal administration of a regional prosecutor’s office.
Completing the list is Carlos Guitart, a retired Army colonel, who now heads the cabinet of the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention. His arrival reflects a broader trend within the establishment of the Ministry of Security: the incorporation of ex-military personnel and politically trusted figures in civil leadership spaces related to public safety.
Beyond his military experience and closeness to republicanism and the political circle of Johannes Kaiser, his background does not show accredited experience in complex civil public management, legislative articulation, or leadership of interinstitutional public policies. It is precisely there where difficulties begin for a position that requires political and technical capabilities distinct from traditional military command.
The situation takes on particular sensitivity considering that Guitart, as a retired colonel, already receives a pension funded by Capredena, a system predominantly sustained by fiscal resources. In addition to that pension – which, based on public data on retired colonels, amounts to around $3.5 million monthly – he now receives a remuneration exceeding $6 million as chief of staff of the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention. In total, the state disburses nearly $9.5 million monthly to finance both salaries, an amount that even exceeds the President of the Republic’s salary in some months.
However, the debate does not end with the amount: the controversy lies in the fact that such a level of public resources ends up backing a strategic position whose leadership demands political, legislative, and technical capabilities not evidenced in the official’s professional trajectory.
Sources consulted for this report describe how this lack of political experience was particularly exposed in the cabinet team’s incapacity to build supports, order interlocutions, and maintain effective political dialogue for the duo Steinert-Quintana within Congress and the ruling party itself.
The lack of legislative articulation, the difficulty in containing communication crises, and the precariousness of internal political networks ultimately deepened the isolation of both authorities during the most challenging moments of management.
In this context, the presence of profiles without prior experience in political negotiation or civil management not only weakened the strategic leadership of the ministry but also reduced its capacity to construct institutional governability surrounding the implementation of the new National Public Safety System.
Arrau’s Legacy: A System to Build Without Who Will Build It
Martín Arrau arrived at the Ministry of Security on May 19 from the MOP, where he had already demonstrated executive capability. An industrial civil engineer, former governor of Ñuble, former constituent, and a trusted republican of Kast: his profile is notably more technical and political than Steinert’s. According to published information, Kast entrusted him with the freedom to modify his team of undersecretaries if he saw fit. This includes Quintana.
Arrau’s initial movements suggest a different style: he reversed the physical distribution of the building that Steinert had modified, returning to the 4th floor where former minister Luis Cordero operated, and conveyed confidence to Quintana by asking her to continue making progress. Within the undersecretary’s environment, they highlight that he managed to pass the first security law of the government in Congress this week and that his territorial deployment has been consistent.
These are valid arguments. However, they do not address the most relevant technical question: Can Quintana lead the implementation of the systems that Law 21.730 demands after having been an active part of the process that dismantled the units that were supposed to do so?
The new minister inherits a scenario of high technical complexity. He must aim to implement the National Security System without the specialized units that were to execute it because his predecessor dissolved them. He must resume the Integrated Criminal Information System without the engineering team that developed it and without formal documentation on the state of progress of the project. He must articulate a legislative agenda without officials with experience in parliamentary management in key positions.
And he must make decisions regarding a human team that, for the most part, was not built for the institutional task ahead, but rather for the political loyalty of a management that has now ended.
The departure of Steinert did not merely signify the end of a minister. It marked the end of a leadership logic: appointing trusted operators in technical positions, dissolving the units that required specialized knowledge, and managing public safety as though it were a device for political communications.
The orphans of this logic are numerous and have names: Quintana, who defends an uncomfortable position without a political network of her own and bearing the weight of dismantling decisions; Chocair, who took on a position that lasted less than a news cycle; Chambi, who remains in the ministry as an advisor; Guitart, Pavez, Gajardo, Adrián: all in positions for which their backgrounds did not prepare them, sustained by the political loyalty of an administration that no longer exists.
However, the most significant orphan does not have a specific name. It is the National Security System. It is the Integrated Criminal Information System. It is the technical architecture that Law 21.730 mandated to build and that the Steinert-Quintana management dismantled with record speed, with the unintentional efficiency of those who do not know what they are destroying.
Arrau arrives at a building with an organizational chart but without muscle. The question Chile should be asking is not only who occupies the chairs of Teatinos 220 today. It is how much longer the country can afford to pay for the organized improvisation of those who arrived promising an emergency but never constructed the response.
From the perspective of Fenaminsa (the Federation of Officials of the Ministry of Interior and Related Services, which closely followed the legislative process that led to Law 21.730), the most concerning aspect of the scenario described in this report is not the rotation of authorities or the communication missteps. It is something deeper and harder to repair: the systematic devaluation of specialized knowledge within an institution that, by legal mandate, was supposed to strengthen precisely in technical capacities.
For those who worked on developing the National Security System and the Integrated Criminal Information System, it is difficult to understand how the dismissal of more than 40 professionals and specialists was justified when even public clarity about the existence, scope, or format of the supposed Security Master Plan that was to guide the new institutional architecture was lacking.
From Fenaminsa’s perspective, one of the most concerning aspects of Ana Victoria Quintana’s management has been not only the weakening of the technical capacities of the Undersecretariat but also the conceptual misunderstanding regarding the role that information systems play in public safety.
For the federation, the undersecretary repeatedly confused data with strategic information. This confusion became evident when she referred to homicide reports as ‘hard data’, omitting that the homicide category does not constitute primary data but information developed through processing and validation of police, forensic, and judicial records that allows attributing a death to the actions of third parties.
This distinction is not trivial. In public safety, isolated data are useless if there are no processes of analysis, interoperability, and technical contextualization that allow them to be transformed into reliable information for decision-making.
This lack of understanding was further exposed when Quintana publicly asserted that homicide reports would enable citizens to “take self-care measures,” implicitly shifting the responsibility for safety onto individuals and dangerously approaching a logic of self-protection.
From that point of view, the issue was not merely communicational, but an expression of a leadership that reduced complex criminal analysis systems to instruments of public dissemination, undermining precisely the technical capacities that Law 21.730 sought to consolidate.
The dismantling documented in this report has consequences that extend beyond individual names. What is lost when specialized units are dissolved is not only the accumulated work: it is the interinstitutional trust that makes the system function.
For Carabineros to share data with the PDI, for the PDI to cross-reference them with the SII, for the Prosecutor’s Office to access criminal intelligence in real-time. That trust is not established by a decree. Nor is it recovered with a new organizational chart. The warning issued by Fenaminsa is precise: “The precarization of technical knowledge within the State ends up directly impacting the public capacity to respond to increasingly complex criminal phenomena.” That is precisely what is at stake in Teatinos 220.
Therefore, we reiterate: The question Chile should be asking is not only who occupies the chairs of Teatinos 220 today. It is how much longer the country can afford to pay for the organized improvisation of those who arrived promising the emergency but never built the response.
El Ciudadano
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